Archived FAQ discussions

The following comments were originally posted to our Frequently Asked Questions page, but were "lost in translation" to the new web site, and were absent for nearly a year. We've brought them back in this archived form, for your reference, and for the search engines. ;)

20 Responses

I just ordered 5 ipad and 5 ipod kits and would like to know how the shipping works. What is the cut-off time for shipping and is there a way to ‘upgrade’ shipping to prioirty in the future. thank you – larry

In a nutshell, express shipping is (for the moment) limited to the bulk ordering page – for which your order would have qualified. I apologize for the slightly-confusing ordering situation – we’ve got a better solution in the works, and in the meantime I’ll do what I can to clarify the text on these pages.

At present, there is no particular shipping cut-off time. We’ve been making refinements to our shipping systems and procedures, and our current policy is to ship within 1 business day, although we frequently ship same-day.

Due to some unusual logistics today, your order probably won’t be able to ship until after the Post Office’s cutoff this evening. Since your order could have been cheaper via the bulk ordering page, however, I’ll upgrade it to Priority Mail.

Sorry for the delayed response – just discovered a bunch of web site comment notifications (including yours) sitting in the spam folder!

In a nutshell: When using our adhesive kits, neither clamping nor heat should be required for normal repairs, although both could be useful in special cases.

Heat would soften the adhesive, which could make it easier to overcome slight irregularities in the frame, but the bond would be weaker until the adhesive had cooled back down. For this purpose, the limiting factor would probably be the heat tolerances of the specific device’s battery.

As for clamping duration (although, again, typical repairs are good-to-go without any clamping), the adhesive bond will continue to build strength for up to 72 hours, with the first 4 hours being especially significant. If you want to maximize bond strength for a bent frame, for example, these are probably the numbers you’re looking for.

Apologies again about the delayed response. Let me know if you have further questions.

Michael’s comment notification (and yours) erroneously landed, unnoticed, among the ~1,000 spam messages I receive every day. I’ve set up some new email filters to prevent GMail from making such mistakes in the future, and posted a detailed response to Michael’s question. Let me know if I’ve left anything unclear.

Dereksays:

Tuesday, 8th April 2014 at 11:26 pm

Thanks for the detailed response Benji… So far I am very impressed with the samples I received, as well as the kits I already bought, and will be using your kits exclusively.

We are an apple dealer and we do a lot of iPad, iPhone , iPod repair. Can I get some sample for the iPad 2, iPad mini and iPod touch 4th gen? I am not very happy with the adhesive that I got, which have lots of lifting problem. I hope your product will work for me.

I’m happy to share technical information about the usage and performance of our adhesives, but right now it’s our policy to treat the names of the specific 3M products we use as proprietary information. Please let me know if you have any other questions I might be able to answer.

I don’t have any image immediately available, other than the illustrated diagram which you should have received. The two pieces for the home button bracket form a circle around the home button when they are in position. We just split them into two pieces in order to make them faster and easier to handle (a circle of adhesive is fidgety, and difficult to position accurately).

Does that clarify things?

Wessays:

Thursday, 2nd April 2015 at 8:15 am

The problem is that there is tape across the back of the home button on the Digitizers that I have for iPad mini’s, as seen here: http://imgur.com/Gm2yBIk

I suspect based on the design of the adhesive that this tape will need to be cut away from the home button to make way for the adhesive?

If I understand what I’m seeing in the photo, it looks like a home button assembly is preinstalled on the digitizers you are using. If that’s the case, you don’t need those particular adhesive pieces from the kit – the home button is not a common point of adhesive failure, and you should be fine with whatever they’ve provided. The four large pieces that go around the perimeter of the frame are the important part.